


Bravery: A Companion Piece

by DevineMandate



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: Companion Piece, Points of View
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:53:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24010864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DevineMandate/pseuds/DevineMandate
Summary: Previous work "Course He Does" chapters 4 and 5, but from the opposite perspective (chapters 1 and 3 in this work), with a bit of Strike musing in between those chapters.
Relationships: Robin Ellacott/Cormoran Strike
Comments: 8
Kudos: 32





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by ["Course He Does"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23017504) by [DevineMandate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DevineMandate/pseuds/DevineMandate). 



> This is, in large part, a remix of the end of "Course He Does". But I also want to explore Strike screwing up his courage to go over to Robin's in that scenario.

NOTE: THIS IS AN ALTERNATE POV OF AND AN EXPANSION ON A PREVIOUS WORK OF MINE "COURSE HE DOES". PLEASE READ THAT FIRST IF YOU HAVEN'T IN ORDER TO GET THE MOST OUT OF THIS STORY.

Strike walks into the office Monday morning, feeling refreshed and free. His true and final split with Charlotte has left him feeling light and happy all weekend, the world glowing with possibility, every draw and puff of a cigarette bringing divine satisfaction; the weight of his long obsession with her has been dropped like so much ballast into a bottomless pit, never to be seen again. He’s so cheerful, he’ll probably even be able to handle hearing about Robin’s boyfriend John with minimal impact on his continuing elation.

He opens some of the office mail, grinning even at the bills they are most definitely able to pay these days, then opens an envelope with handwriting on it that is scrawled and uneven.

Strike shakes his head as he reads a letter from a woman in Ireland who declares she and Strike are soulmates to the end of time, and that she understands him better than anyone else ever could. He has had letters from several women (and one man) like this now, and feels lucky none of these people have gone further, like stalking him in person or threatening self-harm. He has seen both women and men, friends and colleagues, go through the torture of being tracked and followed and harassed online and in person, not feeling safe in their own homes or at their jobs; the women he’s known who have gone through this experience especially feared for the lives and well-being of themselves and their families. He prays to a God he doesn’t particularly believe in that it never happens to him, but this sort of problem is just a byproduct of the agency’s excellent performance and good press. If he has to watch out for a crazy person with a knife who thinks they and Strike need to be in Heaven together, he’ll take that along with the thousands of pounds that are miraculously sitting in the bank.

As he reads the letter again, he hears Robin mounting the clanging staircase, and he is still reading the letter when she walks in and almost immediately says:

“Morning!”

There’s something wrong with her voice--the greeting doesn’t seem authentic. He raises his eyes to her face, and there’s an overbright smile on it, almost a manic smile, though it falters a bit as he looks at her for another moment. In trying to ascertain her mood, he cannot help but notice that she looks amazing as well, her clothes professional but clinging. Perhaps she’s seeing John later today; he has noted that their dates no longer occur exclusively on weekends, his jealousy allying with his observational skills to seek out knowledge with which to make him wriggle and twitch.

She makes as though to fill the gap. “Anything interesting?” she says, pointing at the letter he is holding.

He decides not to pursue whatever is going on with her; she seems tense enough that something will spring out of her inevitably if he just waits. “Nah, just another nutter. How was your week…”

Before he can finish the standard, banal inquiry, she is responding...and she is a little shrill, actually: “I split up with John this weekend.”

The immediate feeling is shock, and his hand loosens and the letter falls from his hand, almost low enough to elude his instinctive, reacting grasp before his fingertips snag it in mid-air. A flood of emotions run through him, his heart leaping at the thought that no one is kissing or touching Robin, and sinking at the thought that he will never kiss or touch her, since sense demands it, even though they are both single. It will be torture as long as it lasts, this way of life, but right now, what Robin needs is a friend and a sympathetic ear, so he rallies himself and says, “Really? I’m so sorry, Robin.”

“Yeah, me too. It had to happen, though.”

She is shaking, just a little, and he is on alert for trouble now. Had John been abusive in some way? “Had to happen? What do you mean?”

She looks like she’s trying to figure out what to say, shaking a little more, and then she blurts out a meaningless sentence that can’t even generously be called an explanation: “There was just an impasse we couldn’t overcome.”

“Hmmm,” says Strike, who is now very concerned, but also aware of how Robin is dancing away from the subject. He decides to take a different tack rather than ask what happened directly. “Was it a mutual decision?”

She shakes even harder, what can possibly have her so fraught and on edge? He waits a moment for her to gather herself, and she says, in a steady voice that belies her shaking figure: “I’m the one who made the decision. He wants to stay together.”

Even in his fretting over Robin’s physical and emotional state, Strike’s brain finds room to be bitterly dismissive: anyone interested in women would be interested in her. Who in fuck’s name would not want to share a conversation, a bed, a life with this woman? Almost without his consent, his eyes roll and his hand waves and his mouth says: “Course he does.”

Her response is fast and sharp, and the frown lines on her forehead are intense, and she is not shaking anymore. “Don’t, Cormoran, don’t do that.”

He is surprised, has no idea what he’s done to her, is utterly confused at her reaction. “Do what?”

Her voice wobbles for a moment on the first word, then goes back to the sharp, staccato rhythm from before: "Don't…don't say nice things about me like that, it isn't fair."

He is utterly out of his depth, feels like he is floundering in the middle of the ocean, feels pathetically male in his utter inability to understand her emotional state. "Wait, what? Fair? Robin, what's happening?"

Robin’s face flushes and her eyes narrow. She glowers at him and, to his continuing distress and confusion, mocks his words and tone: _“Course he does.”_ She looks at him intently. “Why of course?”

He is again confused and now apprehensive. He can’t answer that question without giving the whole game away, so he lets his honest perplexity do the talking here to see what happens next: “What?”

Now she looks actually hostile. “Don’t be fucking coy, Cormoran.” And now in Strike’s head, anger is wrestling with fear and bewilderment for the reins. “Back in the vastness of time, you said that exact same thing on the trip to Barrow...I said Matt wanted to stay together and you said ‘Course he does’ the exact same way you said it just now, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.” Damn her sharp memory and her complete inability to leave well enough alone. “Is it so obvious, Cormoran? Really? What is it you mean?”

She’s cornered him completely, and he snarls like an animal in a trap. “I think it’s pretty obvious what I mean, Robin.”

Fury only makes her more beautiful, somehow. Her face gets more and more ruddy as she speaks. “Yes, Cormoran, you make it sound like it’s so bloody obvious that a man would be in love with me. You say that you’d rather spend time with me than that ghoul you claim to love.” It feels as though a tidal wave has pummeled him, and he’s unable to keep his mouth from dropping open or his eyes from goggling. “You say these things...you say things like that a lot, things that brush up against being incredibly complimentary of me, and then you back off, retreat, shut me out. It isn’t fair! You can’t lift me up so high just to throw me out in the cold!” She is actually crying in her anger and distress, and he feels _so_ ashamed and baffled--he laid himself bare so many times when he thought he’d been careful and covert and clever, and he has apparently been hurting her in this manner for a very long time. Since Barrow, at the least.

He sits down because he feels incapable of standing anymore, and just stares at her, open-mouthed. He knows he needs to speak here, but has no idea what to say, where to start. She’s kicked down a barrier that he had assumed would be permanent between them, and he feels exposed and embarrassed and small. He reaches for words, but they will not come, and the tears continue to course down Robin’s face.

Robin finally breaks the incredibly awkward silence, her mouth a straight line: “I need a personal day.”

Now he feels panicky, afraid that she will run forever if she runs now. “No, Robin, wait…”

Robin is not having it. “No! I can’t think, and I don’t want to look at you or talk to you right now, and I know that’s unfair and immature, but I don’t give a fuck. Maybe tomorrow we can talk about this like grownups, but it’s definitely not happening right now. There’s nothing so urgent I can’t take this time, so I’m going to.”

In her voice, he hears the adamant implacability of her mindset, so he does not follow her or try to make amends as she clatters down the stairs, but sits there, reeling and frightened, his heart at a gallop.

What is he going to do about Robin’s assignments today?

What is he going to do about _them _?__


	2. Chapter 2

For Strike, most of the morning passes in a flurry of phone calls and the re-jiggering of plans. Robin was right that there is nothing incredibly important or pressing on her docket for the day, but there are still people who need to be followed and photographed, phone calls to make, transactions and exchanges that need facilitating. In between accomplishing the things he had planned for himself today, Strike calls in contracted help, which he and Robin use with some regularity, to cover for her absence. Getting them up to speed on their assignments is a significant task in and of itself. It is nearly noon before Strike feels that he can take a breath and focus on what happened early this morning. He goes downstairs, sits at the bar of the Tottenham with a pint in front of him, and thinks.

That ghoul. Robin had called Charlotte a _ghoul_!

He goes back to Robin’s arrival and tries to break down each piece. First there was her awkward, insincere greeting and the sudden, strident, un-Robin-like way she’d announced that she and John had split up. That had been followed by her tremorous un-explanation of the circumstances of their break-up. Last, there was her verbal assault on him and his behavior after he’d put his foot in it.

The romantic implications were clear, he wasn’t imagining that. She had cited his backward compliments and compared herself directly to Charlotte (well, actually, he supposed he was the one who’d done that--she was only saying what he’d said, except he hadn’t called Charlotte a ghoul). But why her outbursts and the tremors and the quick trigger on her temper and the subsequent rapid escalation?

All right, she had been strange from the moment she walked in. Something had been on her mind already then, what? What might make her awkward with him, and then scared, and then angry at him in this fashion?

Strike feels stupid, smart, and staggered all at once when it comes together for him: she’d come to make a confession to him, her hair trigger had been because she was on edge from the start. She’d come to tell him that she had romantic feelings for him, that she wanted him.

Of course. Hence, awkward. Hence, nervous. Hence, angry.

 _And she wore those clothes for me this morning. It_ was _longing on her face on Friday. She split up with John over me._

Strike had not known you could feel pride and shame so intensely at the same time, but here he was.

So...Robin--believing that Strike was still dating Charlotte, perhaps unsure that Strike felt the same way about Robin _really_ , knowing the titanic stakes--had marched in to risk everything. The job she so cherishes, their friendship...all to find out what else they could be to each other...

So brave. Robin is so brave.

Strike’s standards for bravery are not low; he is a soldier who has seen combat, seen women finally take back their lives and children from their abusive husbands (though, discouragingly, that wasn’t usually the way it went).

Robin was assaulted and raped and nearly killed, agoraphobic afterwards, and yet she is still open to life and experience. She jettisoned a chance at a well-paying job to pursue her childhood dream. She displayed good...no...excellent performance at work during a year where she endured another assault, panic attacks, Matthew’s belittling of those attacks, her crumbling marriage, a mental breakdown, and being cut off emotionally from Strike. He cannot believe such a woman exists, let alone that this woman is gorgeous and sexy and wants him. He has done nothing to deserve it. His eyes mist over for a moment.

Strike does not feel brave right now. He wants to run and hide. It won’t work, it can’t work. It’s foolishness of the highest order, the idea of them being a couple. So what if his sister, and his aunt, and Ilsa all have a gleam in their eye when they ask how Robin is doing? So what if his heart and his cock flutter at the sight of her, the smell of her? The business has never been so successful--they’d be jeopardising their whole lives, personal and professional. Robin might be that brave, but he is not sure he is.

His mobile rings, startling him. For one sweat-soaked moment, he thinks it will be Robin calling...but it is his sister Lucy, and he answers.

“Hello, Lucy.”

“Hi Stick, I’m just calling to confirm you’ll be at Jack’s birthday party on Saturday.”

Since Jack’s appendicitis, Strike has made a significant effort to be a presence in his nephews’ lives. “Yeah, wouldn’t miss it.”

“Wonderful! How is everything with you?”

Strike opens his mouth to say everything is fine, but everything is not fine, and he has no one to talk to about this, really. Given the differences between him and his sister, he is surprised to find himself saying:

“Actually, Lucy, my world is kind of in shambles right now. Robin came into the office this morning and more or less said she has feelings for me.”

Lucy gasps and then says, “That’s great! But what do you mean by in shambles?”

“Well, it ended with me staring wide-mouthed and silent, and with her in tears before she said she had to take the day off and ran away.”

“Oh, Stick, oh no.” She is quiet for a moment. “Do you want to be with her?”

“Yes...no...I don’t know.”

“It’s good to know our boys in the military are so decisive.” Strike barks a surprised laugh before Lucy goes on. “What about Charlotte?”

Strike sighs. It is annoying that every time he tells someone about this, they are going to make it obvious that they believe he should have left Charlotte a long time ago.

“I split up with her on Friday, it’s over. Permanently this time.”

“Oh my God, Stick, really?”

“Well, she called Robin a bitch and a big-uddered cow, she called Robin AND Mum bints, and she hopes all three of us--Robin, Mum, and I--burn in hell. So yeah, I think it’s safe to say it’s finally over.”

There’s a sharp intake of breath on Lucy’s end. “Blimey, that’s...wow.”

“Yeah.”

“Well...that does sound nice and permanent… So that’s not a problem, then,” Lucy says, moving on. “Why are you not sure about being with Robin?”

“Because it’s idiotic!” he shouts with sudden violence, and the pub’s occupants look askance at him before looking away. “Because if we do this and it doesn’t work, everything falls apart...us, the agency, my whole life! _Our_ whole lives!”

Lucy does not raise her voice. “You don’t think Robin considered all that before she told you?”

Strike sighs again and stops shouting. “Yeah, I know, I know, but I’m scared, Lucy. I’m not brave like Robin. Not in circumstances like this.”

“Oh, what’s your plan then? To lie and tell her that you don’t want her and then keep working together under those circumstances? Yeah, that definitely sounds like a recipe for job stability and a good, ongoing relationship with Robin. Stick, listen to me, please, just once in your life. I know you think I’m an uptight square who wants to box you into a quote unquote ‘normal’ life, but all I want is for you to be happy, and I’ve never seen anyone make you as happy as Robin does. If you push her aside out of fear, then you are the self-destructive joke that I know you sometimes think of yourself as.”

“Easy for you to say. You’ve been with Greg for more than a decade now and you never worked with him; you don’t know what it is to put your whole life in danger.”

Lucy is quiet on the line for a few seconds. “It seems to me you think you have a monopoly on understanding the risk that comes with putting your heart out there. I can assure you that the road with me and Greg was not that smooth, and believe it or not, my banal, conventional heart beats and aches just like yours. I may not have worked with Greg, but I know what it is to risk what feels like everything for a chance at love. If you can’t take that step, then you’re the one who’s uptight and letting the world dictate your actions, not me.”

Strike feels defensive and guilty, recognising the truth in Lucy’s last statement especially. “All right, that’s fair, I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted. Now, what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know, Lucy. You make some good points, but I just don’t know if I can do this.”

“What do you think Mum would have to say about all this?” asks Lucy, and her tone implies that she is making a great sacrifice in bringing their mother up, given how distasteful she finds the memory of their mother and their upbringing.

Strike is quiet, imagines Leda meeting Robin, and the delight they would have taken in one another.

Lucy doesn’t wait for him to speak: “I’ll tell you what Leda Strike would have said. She’d have told you that you were being a moronic arsehole shooting down your own chance at happiness, and for once, I have to tell you, I agree with her. Be brave, Stick! Take up the gauntlet Robin has thrown down, and go after what you want! I can’t make you do it, but I know it’s the right thing for you...and for Robin for that matter. You both care about each other so much, and frankly from everything I hear, it sounds as though both of your romantic lives include a long relationship with an undeserving twat. You both deserve better. Go after the brass ring, Stick. I’m happy to tell you that being in love for a long time and deeply respecting your partner is absolutely fantastic, and it’s all that I wish for you. Please, please, don’t sabotage your life. Go and tell her!”

Strike never in a million years would have predicted that his sister would be his romantic guardian angel in his hour of need, but he cannot deny any of what she says...and it’s true: Leda would have berated him harshly for not pursuing Robin.

“Okay. All right. I will.”

“REALLY?!”

“Yeah, Lucy, really, I’m taking your advice. Don’t get used to it! I still don’t want children.”

“Oh, I’m so happy!” And then Lucy bursts into tears. Through her weeping, she says, “Never mind me, just go do the thing before you chicken out. I love you so much, Stick.”

“I love you too, Lucy. Thank you.” He rings off.

With this decided, he consults his schedule for the rest of the day. He’ll be busy until mid-afternoon, but so long as someone covers for him at the office for the last couple of hours, he can go over to Robin’s this afternoon. He swoons a little at the thought.

He calls Barclay, the only person besides himself and Robin whom he really trusts to handle new clients and general office maintenance.

Barclay picks up. “Strike, what can I do for ye?”

“Barclay. Can you come to Denmark Street this afternoon around 3:00? I need someone to watch the office.”

“What’s Robin about, then?”

“Personal day, last minute.”

“Ach, might be a tight squeeze, no way you can handle this?”

“Errr, no, have a bit of a personal emergency this afternoon myself.”

Barclay says nothing for a moment, and then: “Both of ye have shakeups in your life today, do ye? What a coincidence.” He’s clearly suppressing laughter.

“Can you do it or not?” says Strike, exasperated.

“Aye, I’ll be there, Strike. The wife won’t be happy, but when I tell her the circumstances, I think she’ll understand.”

Throughout the early afternoon, Strike is a jittering mess, making rookie mistakes, having to correct himself several times over both on paper and aloud to clients.

Barclay finally arrives to relieve Strike (and to intensify his anxiety), and bids Strike a smiling “Good luck!” as Strike leaves the office.

He is not certain Robin will be at home, and cannot bear the thought of calling or texting her to confirm her location. He’ll stay planted by her door until she comes home if she is not there to begin with.

If she’s willing to see him after the way he reacted this morning, at least.

Though he knows her address and the trains he needs to take, he double checks both the address and the trains on his phone as he walks downstairs, feeling light-headed with anticipation and anxiety. Life is so surreal--it’s a day like any other day, but it’s also the most important day of his life.

After the walk down to the Tube station, he gets onto the train, which is uncrowded in the lull between lunch and the end of the work day. A thrill runs through him as the train doors shut. If he is going to...if he really is going to...if he can actually do this, then perhaps Robin’s kiss is less than an hour away.

But to get that kiss, he has to be brave.

Like Robin is brave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought it would be Ilsa or Barclay that would talk with Strike at length, but Lucy suddenly showed up, and insisted she was the right person for the job. :)
> 
> "...find out what else they could be to each other" is from Lethal White near the beginning, right before Strike walks out on Robin's dance with Matthew.
> 
> Corrections welcome if I missed anything in Barclay's accent or phrasing.


	3. Chapter 3

Strike’s pulse pounds as he approaches Robin’s building. With every step, he grows less and less certain that this is the right thing to do, such that he must force himself to take each step, his will just barely outweighing his fear.

At the building’s main door, he stands in front of the buzzer for thirty seconds, trying to make his arm do the next step. He seriously considers just bolting and dealing with everything tomorrow.

_”Go for the brass ring, Stick.”_

Without thinking about it (because if he thinks, he will run), he hits the buzzer for Robin’s flat.

Within a few seconds, another buzzer goes off at the building’s door, and Strike pushes inside, still empty-minded but for the one directive of getting to Robin’s door.

He is there within seconds. This is it. And that fact sends one last bolt of panic through him. It feels like it’s surging back and forth between his heart and brain.

_“...deeply respecting your partner is absolutely fantastic…”_

He knocks.

He is not sure if he imagines the stirrings he hears from within--his ears might be playing tricks on him. After a short stretch, he knocks again.

“Coming!”

It’s Robin. Oh God, it’s Robin! It's as though he is about to crest the initial hill of a rollercoaster. Oh what was he thinking? He needs to get out of here right now, he…

The door opens.

“Cormoran, hi.”

Lord, her beauty takes his breath away. Robin is dressed for comfort, barefoot, and there is a profound sexiness to seeing her in what amounts to pyjamas. She radiates nervousness in her expression and body language. Beyond her, he can see a pint of ice cream with a spoon in it at the table and two take-away containers that are half-empty. A personal day, indeed.

“Robin.” He doesn’t know what else to say, and is glad when Robin finally says something.

"The office?"

"Got Barclay on it."

"Ah.”

There is silence for a moment, and suddenly, Strike feels completely unsure of everything. Does she want to hear what he has to say? Does she even actually want him at all or is he a delusional fool?

“Will you come in?”

It sounds like a genuine invitation, but his doubt gets the better of him, and he tries to give her an out. “I don’t know. Should I?”

A look of uncertainty flits across Robin’s face...and then the flat’s buzzer rings behind her, and this seems to brace her.

“Well, that’s an order of pad thai, chicken satay, peanut sauce, and some spring rolls coming up the stairs in a moment here. Does that entice you?” She smiles, obviously on eggshells.

This is the moment when he knows he’s going to see it through. Her apprehensive smile is so vulnerable, it breaks his heart. This is the woman he wants, this kind soul that needs her heart protected after the battering it has endured from the world and Matthew. He smiles the smallest smile.

“Ah, you know me too well, Robin.” He crosses the threshold, and walks across the room and behind the sofa while Robin buzzes the delivery man in and sorts out the payment.

She turns around after shutting the door, and looks at him. He says nothing for a few moments as he returns her look. Then he says the first thing that needs to be said, surprised when she says the same thing at the same time.

“I’m sorry.”

There’s a pause, and they both give a brief, shaking laugh.

“No, I’m sorry,” says Robin. “It wasn’t...I didn’t mean...it wasn’t the message I wanted to get across.”

Strike thinks the kick in the head he received was deserved and just, and possibly the only thing that could have spurred him to action. He coughs before he speaks. “No, I...I think it was a good message and, er, delivered with the appropriate amount of feeling.”

Out of nowhere, Strike feels incredibly woozy and faint, in disbelief and terror that the moment is in front of him. He wobbles like a jelly before he braces his hand on the back of the sofa.

“Cormoran, are you all right? What’s wrong? Something wrong with your leg?”

Now that “I’m sorry” is out of the way, the next step is clear, but there’s no turning back if he takes it. He wipes a hand across his perspiring brow. His eyes pierce hers for a few seconds, and though he draws strength from her kind, worried countenance, it still takes every single ounce of his self-control to get the words out.

“I split up with Charlotte.”

Robin’s eyes are like saucers; her initial exclamation reminds him of a tea kettle's whistling shriek. “What?! You did? What, today?”

Is it better or worse if he split up with her less recently? It doesn't matter, the facts will suffice. “Friday, actually. We split up on Friday.” He shakes with indecisiveness as he looks at her, then casts his head down, his courage spent.

He hears Robin set the food down and pad over to him. He is still looking down, fearing that she will lay a sympathetic hand on his shoulder and tell him softly that it's a mistake to do this, or that she doesn't feel that way about him even if perhaps it sounded like that at the office, or that she can't ever really respect him or forgive him after his going back to Charlotte. He can't bear the thought of looking up and seeing rejection in her face, so his head stays down. 

But when he feels her warm hand, it is on the side of his neck. He looks up.

In the past, he has shared intense looks with Robin, but they have both been hiding their true feelings for some time. Now when she looks at him, her affection for him is undisguised, and he hopes she can see that he has laid himself bare too. The potency of their chemistry, the sheer electricity crackling between them, is undeniable.

When she says his name, it sounds fierce and gentle and like she has waited to say his name this way for a long time. 

“Cormoran.”

Her hands cup his jaw and cheeks a moment before she reaches behind him and pulls his head down to plant her mouth on his.

In the months and years of knowing and wanting Robin, Strike has come to think of his love for her as a portion of his soul that will always be imprisoned, inside looking out on something it cannot have, forever.

Her warm, soft kiss obliterates the walls of his self-made prison, and the piece of himself that never thought it would be fulfilled still aches, but no longer with desperation and despair, now with joy and release and fulfillment. Robin is kissing him. Robin is _kissing_ him!

His arms snake around her waist and he pulls her a little closer to himself, purposely not deepening the kiss for now, wanting to savour the brush of her lips, hear the hitches in her breathing as they press their mouths together, their kissing tender but intense.

He pulls away and she does too, her hands still on him but looking at his face.

Robin says, “How long?”

The tortured sound that emerges from Strike’s mouth sounds excessive to himself, like an overwrought interpretation of Heathcliff pining for Catherine in Wuthering Heights. “A couple of years now, before you were married.” Just saying that lifts weight, untold weight off of his overburdened heart.

Robin’s eyes are instantly brimming with tears, and she says, “Oh! No! No, you poor thing, oh Cormoran.” She wraps him in her arms and whispers, her mouth close to his ear. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know, I didn’t know. I didn’t know I was making you wait, oh God, Cormoran, I’m sorry…”

She’d done nothing wrong, she has nothing to apologise for, and anyway, his own conduct was worse… but it is still gratifying to hear her say it. And for the first time today, he seriously considers how much Charlotte must have hurt her… like Matthew hurt him. “Yeah, it’s all right. I’m sorry about Charlotte.” He pauses for some time, trying to think of the best way to tell her the honest, simple truth. “I was afraid. For our business, for our friendship. I still am afraid, a little. But I could have said something." Can it really be that those long hours and years of pain boil down to so few words?

She doesn't sound appeased, like her empathetic heart has lost all consideration for itself and beats only for him right now. "God, what you endured. Oh Christ, Cormoran…"

It occurs to Strike that since this is in the open, something else needs to be said. "Hey, I know we've talked about this already. But when I sacked you...I was vindictive and cruel about it because of how I felt about you. It was a shit thing to do. I'm sorry." He really was a bastard that day, he feels so regretful thinking about it.

She leans back from him and seems to consider his face, and then she says, “I forgive you. I love you. You’re wonderful.”

Strike feels a tremendous lump in his throat, and if he thinks any longer about how long he has wanted this, and how she is the most wonderful, forgiving person on earth, and how his heart aches and throbs at Robin’s declaration (so _brave_!), he will be sobbing.

So instead, he pulls Robin close, and kisses her, tenderness now combined with desire. His tongue goes past the threshold of her lips as his hands roam on her back, and after he teases the end of her tongue with his for a few moments, he dives further into her mouth, and her tongue presses and swirls against his, and he cannot believe how good she tastes or how much she obviously wants him. He stops kissing her to look into her eyes. His smile must look idiotic on his ugly face, but he does not really care right now that his smile is idiotic or his face is ugly.

"I love you too," he says. "You've probably figured that out, though. Detective and all."

Her laugh sounds like music to him, and she puts her arms around him, and lays her head on his shoulder. He rests his head gently on her hair (which smells incredible), and is content to feel the warmth and softness of her body and his heart. Tenderness and joy are now intensified by sheer relief--he has overcome his long hardship, walked all the way through the long, barren desert, and Robin has not rejected him, and everything he has endured wasn’t for naught. He has made it to the mountaintop, and the view is more beautiful than he ever dared to hope.

Their embrace takes him back to the moment they first held one another. "This reminds me of your wedding. On the stairs."

Robin’s grip on him tightens a little more. "Oh God. I wanted to leave with you that night. I couldn't believe how much I felt when you held me, how powerful our connection felt."

He is closer to tears than ever; it’s devastating to hear that her feelings were so similar to his that night, and to know that they spent the following year so distant from one another when all they both wanted was to be close to each other--a catastrophic misunderstanding...a tragic waste. "Really?" says Strike, and he is a little embarrassed at how desperate the word sounds. "I almost asked you to leave, actually. I was overwhelmed by that hug, Robin. It felt so intensely right to hold you, like I'd held you before, long ago, and missed you without knowing it. And then I had to let you go again."

She trembles in his arms, and her shout is filled with the exultation and agony he also feels: "Oh, Cormoran!"

She holds him tightly, like she is determined to prove to him that she’ll never let go.

********

Robin is _happy_.

She has never experienced a joy so profound. If she could capture the power of her rejoicing, turn it into pure energy, it would rival the intensity of a star’s nuclear fusion.

Cormoran speaks again: "I don't know what to do with myself, Robin. I never dreamed this would ever actually happen." It is so incredible to hear her own mindset mirrored aloud by him, to know that he feels the same way.

"I know. Me too," says Robin, and she feels his arms tighten around her--the incredible strength of his arms begins to tip her tenderness toward lust. They have waited so long...and much as she might want to just drag him to her bed right now, there are practical considerations even when you and your soulmate declare your undying love to one another after years of waiting.

"Hey," she says, fully breaking contact with him for the first time since their initial kiss. "My flatmate is coming home soon, what should we do?"

"Hmmm, dinner later?"

This is not what Robin had in mind at all; they can cut out the middle man after their long years of friendship and respect--no formality is required for them to be naked with one another as far as she is concerned. "Errr," she says, and she feels glad that she attempted all day to drown her shame and exasperation with food. "I think I have a better plan. We bring the food that's already here to your flat."

Strike’s eyes widen slightly and his fingers flex at his sides. "My flat."

She isn’t sure of his tone, worries she’s gone too fast or demanded an intimacy he is not yet comfortable with. "Yeah. That's all right, isn't it?"

The way he looks at her makes her feel so protected and safe. She hadn’t known how much Matt was letting her down all those years, but only a few minutes of acknowledged romantic affection with Strike have made that abundantly clear. Cormoran cares about _her_ , not what he can get from her.

"It's definitely all right. It's bloody excellent, is what it is."

She grins and then she thinks of the green dress, and positively glows. "Oh! I almost forgot! Here, you pack up the food, there’s ice cream too, and I'll go pack some things to stay the night."

She turns around, pleased and amused after getting just a glimpse of the desperate lust on Cormoran’s face at her mentioning spending the night with him, and goes into her bedroom.

After she shuts the door, she disrobes entirely and looks in the mirror.

Robin sighs at her reflection. She has never really liked her own skin tone and considers herself “fluffy” right now, perhaps a stone or more over the weight that Matt considered ideal for her. She suspects that the extra weight that this puts on her breasts will not be a problem for Cormoran, but she is still self-conscious about her behind, stomach, arms, and legs. She compares herself to Charlotte for the thousandth time, and finds herself wanting yet again. Charlotte’s face was like a beautiful, radiant girl in a Renaissance painting had come to life, her skin luminescent. Her waist was slimmer and her arse no doubt firmer than Robin’s. She was elegant and effortless and her timeless beauty was unrivaled in Robin's memory, and she was a heartless bitch who didn't deserve Cormoran in the slightest. 

_In the final analysis, he loves me, not her--and I know he thinks I’m pretty. And my boobs are better than hers anyway._ It is her one area of complete confidence in her looks; her breasts are substantial (bigger than Charlotte’s, certainly) and sit well on her even when she's undressed and at rest, upright or lying down. She grins and shivers respectively at the thought of Strike seeing and touching her bare chest.

He’s been with so many women, beautiful and rich and sophisticated, but (and the surge of pride she feels is stronger than any she’s experienced) she, Robin Ellacott, is the woman he wants. Has wanted for years. Oh that poor man...she is going to start making it up to him tonight.

It dawns on her at a visceral level that she’s going to know just how hairy he is, what his chest hair feels like, how big his cock is, what his big hands will feel like on her naked body. Heat races though her and in her need to satiate her lust, she stops thinking about or comparing herself to Charlotte or any other woman, and starts throwing toiletries and clothing into a kit bag. This task accomplished, she plucks some errant hairs from her chin and the follicles around her nipples, then puts on what she thinks of as her “sexy underwear” (she only has one such set, finding quality things in her size is expensive) and then opens her closet. She sees the green dress hanging at one end, worn only a couple of times, and she is suddenly, heartbreakingly glad she never wore it for John; this was Strike’s gift to her, his first obscured acknowledgement that he found her attractive, and tonight, wearing it is her long overdue gift to him. This dress is for Cormoran and only Cormoran.

She slips into it, feeling it cling like a second skin. From the first time she wore it in Vashti, she has loved the way she looks in it, and looking at her reflection now, she feels no different. In this moment, in this dress, she can honestly think to herself that Cormoran Strike is a lucky man.

She releases her hair from its ponytail and brushes it but leaves it otherwise in its natural state. She applies foundation, eyeliner, mascara, lipstick, and just a little blush, adding these to the kit bag as she finishes with them, happy she shaved her legs last night in her aching hope that today would turn out as it has…even if it happened a little later in the day and at a different location than she'd imagined.

She's ready. She lifts up the bag and goes to the door and opens it.

"Holy fuck," says Strike, instantly. 

His expression is everything she could have hoped for, equal parts shock and lust, and she absolutely cannot wait for him to fuck her senseless.

There is a quick and profound feeling of gratitude to John for liberating her from some of her worst sexual hangups. The prospect of being naked with Strike is much more exciting than it is terrifying, and that wouldn’t have been the case if she had not been with a decent, generous, thoughtful man in the interim between Matthew and Cormoran--John made it so consistently obvious that he found her attractive, made being naked fun instead of shameful or worrisome (or a venue for judgment as often happened with Matt). She hopes John finds a woman who deserves him, but right now, she needs to be fucked, and Cormoran is the man she needs to fuck her.

The Robin from two months ago couldn’t possibly have said with a straight face what Robin says to Strike now: “Pick your jaw up off the floor, and bring that food with you. You'll want it at two in the morning when you take a short break from fucking my brains out."

Strike’s face is burning, and he appears to grope for words. "Right, sounds good," he chokes. Oh, how happy it makes her to know how much he wants her, to think of how his cock is filling with blood at the sight of her, and she can feel moistness starting to dampen her knickers.

She says, "Let's get a cab. Just a guess, but I imagine you're in as much of a hurry as I am."

"Cab, right, yeah, let's go.” He picks up the food and walks out and Robin follows him and locks the door before she turns around.

When she looks at him, the power of her desire almost frightens her. "Cormoran, I love you. I want you. I can't believe this is happening."

"I'm the luckiest man on earth, Robin. And you’re not going to believe how good I’m about to make you feel."

She can feel her areolae pucker and her nipples stiffen and the ache of her cunt, yearning to be filled with him. She knows, knows with absolute certainty, that she is about to have the best sex of her life, and to have that compounded with the deep, abiding love she feels for him makes her dizzy. She smiles at him, and bites her lip and says, “Guess that makes us both lucky then.”

In the cab, she cannot feel any shame that the cab driver is there while they kiss and kiss and kiss, she’s too busy enjoying the passion and ardor expressed by his hands and mouth, her libido running wild. His hands are gripping her thighs, gripping her arse, sliding up her waist and stomach, whispering over her breasts (she wishes he would go ahead and grab them, but he is obviously determined to torture her before he will do that), and he tastes like tobacco and Doom Bar and toothpaste and like Cormoran Strike. She is out of her mind with lust. It’s really happening.

At Denmark Street, they practically fall out of the cab, and he grabs the food and pays the driver and starts quickly up the stairs.

As they mount them, with the hand that is not holding her bag, she grabs one side of his behind, and moans, and he lets her get ahead of him so that he can squeeze her arse in return (and he moans himself, in a manner that deeply satisfies her and makes her groin stir again).

Finally, they reach the apex of the stairs and the door to Strike’s flat. He fiddles with the key, turns it in the lock...but then steps back and looks at her with concern and trepidation in his eyes.

“Are you sure about this, Robin? I’m old and fat and one-legged, and we have a business to run together. Are you sure?”

Robin is most definitely sure, and cannot keep a disbelieving and possibly derisive look off of her face. “Cormoran, you’re an incredible person, stop denigrating yourself, it’s a nasty habit of yours. As for our business, I’ll make it simple for you: if you don’t shag me silly very soon, I will hand in my notice. I’m not joking.”

She turns the doorknob, pushes the door open, and throws her bag inside.

“And as for whether I’m sure…”

She takes his free hand and pulls him inside.

“Course I am.”

And she slams the door behind them.


End file.
